


Making It A Good One

by WhovianGrad (AmeliaPonders)



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Gen, Mary Sue, because she can be awesome and empowering, don't let that sway you, grad school has taught me to embrace the Mary Sue, ok done lecturing through tags now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-27
Updated: 2016-04-27
Packaged: 2018-06-04 21:32:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 10,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6676165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmeliaPonders/pseuds/WhovianGrad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Torchwood is destroyed on Doomsday, operative Sarah Hanson finds herself totally lost about what to do with her life next. Even though she's been taught to hate the Doctor as an alien enemy, she can't resist a trip on the TARDIS with him and Rose, and they soon find themselves on a weird planet where all writing and art centers around one cartoony character. Everyone there seems blissfully happy, but all is not what it seems, and it's up to Sarah, the Doctor, and Rose to figure out what's going on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Dreams to Doomsday

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of my graduate school thesis about fanfiction as a vehicle for female empowerment, identity building, and resistance to patriarchal norms. During my research, I encountered literature talking about how the Mary Sue is actually a particularly awesome vehicle in fanfic for this kind of thing, and it effectively changed my mind about the value of the Mary Sue. So, I decided to try out writing a Mary Sue fic myself. This is my first one, and at least for now probably my only Mary Sue fic, but it was a lot of fun and I hope you find it enjoyable! And thank you to all Whovian fic writers out there - you totally changed my life by inspiring me and providing a way for me to fall in love with writing again, and for inspiring me to do this thesis and complete grad school! So, without further adieu...

_July 9, 2007_  
_London, England_  
_Planet Earth_

An insane, dangerous, 3D glasses-wearing alien and a bunch of his dorky friends just saved the world. _What’s left of it, anyway_ , Sarah Hanson thought as she looked down at a burning London from the Torchwood tower. None of this felt real. And none of it was supposed to happen this way.

Torchwood was supposed to be Sarah’s dream come true. A sort of twisted dream involving covertly protecting the Earth from alien invasion, but her dream nonetheless. She found out about the agency when doing research for a report on its founder, Queen Victoria, when she was eleven, and becoming a Torchwood operative was her goal from that moment on. Fifteen years, three college degrees, four internships, and one transatlantic move later, and the idealistic, bookish girl from New England was working her way up the ranks at Torchwood One, the organization’s main headquarters at Canary Wharf in London. The same headquarters that was now destroyed, countless pieces of alien technology and weaponry ending up who knows where. All of her coworkers, dead and gone along with thousands or maybe even millions around the world.

It wasn’t like Torchwood was perfect and if today (and the behavior of her entire time at Torchwood, if she was honest) proved anything to Sarah, it was that dreams and reality are two very different things. She’d come to London believing she was going to make the world (and beyond) a better place, protecting humanity and trying to find common ground with remarkable beings from other planets. Her job at Torchwood was in the “Processing Division” – a boring way of saying she and her colleagues were charged to find out how and why an alien was or planned to be on Earth once their initial threat level was assessed by the higher-ups. It reminded Sarah of _Men in Black_ and on her first day, she mentioned this to Ted, the guy whose work station was next to hers. “Torchwood, Miss Hanson,” he’d said coolly, “is _not_ a flashy Hollywood film. This is serious work we do, and you’d do well to remember that.” He marched away from her desk and never liked Sarah from that day on.

There were plenty of her colleagues, like Ted, who consistently saw these aliens as threats first, visitors second, even if the stats didn’t bear out that way. Sarah could never quite get on board with that thinking, but she followed protocol and didn’t play nice when she wasn’t supposed to. And there had been a few really nasty creatures she’d had a hand in protecting the Earth from. But for the most part, she discovered, the aliens just wanted a safe place to go, a fresh start, or an adventure.

For the most part, they weren’t that different from Sarah.

But Yvonne Hartman, the director of Torchwood One, was very firmly in the camp of “aliens are threats” and almost never approved letting them stay on Earth. Sarah’s worst day at Torchwood was when Yvonne made her refuse a family of octopus-like things called Sagromians because their planet’s weaponry could wipe out communications satellites worldwide if they chose. But _these_ Sagromians had no weapons. And yet, it was Sarah’s job to make them go back on their ship with armed guards making sure they complied. The look on the youngest Sagromian’s squishy face as they left to return to their war-torn planet was anything but alien: it was sadness.

Sarah had thought about standing up to Yvonne when she rejected Sarah’s recommendation to grant the Sagromians sanctuary. But she’d worked too hard to get where she was and at the end of the day, the risk was too big. Yvonne fired people almost on a whim, and Sarah couldn’t get fired. She’d put her mind to working for Torchwood, and now that she was here, she wasn’t going to let her dream slip away over some Sagromians, kind as this family was. Besides, Torchwood was it. She had no plan B for her life. Sarah reasoned that if she kept her head down, played by the rules for a while, eventually she’d be the one in Yvonne’s position and could change the way Torchwood did things.

But in the two and a half years since she started, not much had changed for Sarah, despite fifteen hour days, work that most everyone (even Yvonne, occasionally) would admit was exceptional. Her voice, when she did speak up, was often ignored. Her rank and pay were never increased despite the additional duties that had fallen to her. Still, though, there were just enough good days to keep Sarah going. The best ones were when she got to tell the aliens they’d be allowed to stay. She got to hear their stories of worlds beyond, of why they were here and who they were, and every now and then, maybe one in two hundred arrivals, Yvonne didn’t make them leave. It was enough for Sarah for a while, but lately she started getting tired of delivering bad news, of her career stagnation, of her bitch of a boss. She wasn’t sure what to do with these feelings, but then the end of the world happened, so she didn’t get a chance to figure it out.

Sarah turned away from the window and her depressing reverie, back towards the ruined Torchwood office, which wasn’t much better to look at than the destruction below. As she moved to her desk, her limbs felt like she’d been outside in the cold for too long, sluggish and chilled from the inside out. She found an only-partially-charred banker’s box and, with nothing else to do, robotically started cleaning out what was left of her possessions.

“Excuse me,” someone said from behind her. Sarah paused. It was a man’s voice with a sort of middle-class London accent, firm but somehow gentle. Knowing who it was, that last fact irritated Sarah to no end. She’d been trained to think of him as violent, untrustworthy, and threatening. His seemingly kind voice and heroic actions of the day provided yet another dose of confusing reality.

“Yes, Doctor? What is it?” she asked brusquely as she turned to face the Time Lord who she’d been conditioned to regard as Earth’s number one alien threat. The man who was supposed to be deeply dangerous and borderline amoral. The man who had just saved them all.

“Right, hello. I’m the Doctor, as you obviously know because you just called me by my name. Anyway, I was wondering, Miss…”

“Hanson. Sarah Hanson.”

“Miss Hanson. Yes. You’re the one who took out a couple of Cybermen in the north stairwell, right?”

Had she? This entire day was becoming a blur. Sarah had forgotten that she’d actually saved some lives when she’d managed to stun the horrible humans-turned-robots with an electrical prod she’d nicked from the weapons cage, giving the people stuck on the stairs some time to escape. Somehow, even that didn’t seem to matter now. “Uh, yeah, that’s me, I guess,” she replied.

“Thought so. Well, first of all, well done you for stunning the Cybermen. Cattle prod from Mercury, that’s a new one. Always reckoned that lot was vegetarian. Anyway, I’m not sure I would’ve thought to grab that and use it like you did. Well, of course I would’ve, I’m the cleverest being in the universe. But it was quite clever of you to think of it, too, wasn’t it?”

Sarah just stared at him lamely as he rubbed the back of his neck in what seemed like a nervous tic. She was so confused. _This_ rambling, skinny guy was the biggest threat to Earth? And it was pretty hard to forget that he and his gang just got rid of the Daleks and Cybermen that were hellbent on killing humanity, forcing them into a void between universes to hopefully never be heard from again. The Doctor bounced on his Converse-clad feet a little as Sarah remained mute.

That’s when his way-too-pretty, way-too-blonde companion (girlfriend? Wife? Friend with benefits?) came over. Sarah unconsciously tugged at her own mousy hair, working her fingers through the fried blonde tips at the end—remnants of a failed experiment in looking trendy. “Doctor? We better get goin’,” she said in a thick South London drawl as she put her arm around his waist. Her eyes shifted to Sarah. “This the girl who stopped the Cybermen on the stairs?” The Doctor nodded and the girlfriend—Rose, Sarah remembered now—addressed her directly. “Me mum got away because of you. Thanks.” She smiled brightly and hugged Sarah, who remained stiff. Rose backed off. “So, you comin’ with us or not?”

“What?” Coming with them? Why the hell would Sarah do that? _Because you have no place else to go_ , a tired voice in her head whispered.

“We thought we’d give you a trip in the TARDIS as a thank you,” the Doctor explained. “Travels in time as well as space, you know,” he said, grinning like a schoolboy.

“I know all about it,” Sarah said with a reflexive sneer. She’d actually taken a whole training session on the Doctor’s bigger-on-the-inside ship so that Torchwood could be prepared should he ever use it to cause trouble. An infinite ship could hold infinite weapons. The Doctor, they’d been told, claimed he didn’t use weapons, but his track record (and body count) suggested otherwise. He’d destroyed entire planets using that ship in one way or another. “I don’t want any part of it. That thing is dangerous and a threat to planet Earth, and so are you, Doctor!” Okay, so now she was hysterically spewing the company line rather than actually thinking about the situation. Yvonne would be proud. _But Yvonne is dead_.

The Doctor’s expression turned icy, but his eyes flashed fire. Ah, there was the “Oncoming Storm” Sarah had heard so much about. “You don’t know the first thing about my TARDIS, or me, or anyone I associate with, Miss Hanson. Except for the fact that we just saved this planet you think we threaten. Now, UNIT is on its way here and they’re not going to be as kind to any Torchwood personnel left here as I am. So, you can stay here and take your chances with them or come with us and see if you can do some actual good in the universe to undo the years of damage you’ve helped Torchwood inflict. It makes no difference to me.” He walked to his ship, Rose at his heels, but turned back to Sarah before entering the TARDIS. “By the way, you’re welcome for saving your life.”

“I’m supposed to hate you,” Sarah blurted.

“Excuse me?”

“All I’ve ever known of you is what Torchwood told me. That you’re reckless and dangerous and angry. And then you saved us and nothing makes sense anymore!” Sarah didn’t even realize she was crying until a tear fell onto her nose. It made her unravel even more. “This place was my life. I thought we did some good, and I was trying to get us to do more. Obviously, I failed spectacularly. No one listened to me. No one even cared. But I stayed because Torchwood was all I ever wanted. It was all I had. No family. No friends outside of this place. So I’m sorry, Doctor, but you being anything but evil is just a bit more than I can handle right now!” She slammed the semi-charred box onto her desk. It broke apart. Sarah sank to the floor and leaned up against the desk, holding her head in her hands as she continued to sob.

“I am those things they told you,” the Doctor said softly after a moment. “Everything they said was true, Sarah. But they didn’t tell you the whole truth. And I think you know that, because you aren’t the type to see anyone as purely evil, or purely good for that matter, are you?” Sarah shook her head and felt Rose’s hand on her shoulder.

“Look, you’ve been through hell,” the other woman said. “We all have. And you don’t know us, not really. But I’m tellin’ you, you can trust the Doctor. And maybe gettin’ away from this place will do you some good, yeah?”

“I’m sorry I snapped at you guys,” Sarah said quietly after a long, deep breath. “And saying this isn’t really enough since you two probably saved billions of lives today, but thanks.”

Rose just shrugged. “I bet you would’ve done the same.”

“But that’s just it. I didn’t, did I? I mean, I helped a couple of people, but by then it was too late for so many.” Sarah shook her head in disgust. “Everything I thought Torchwood was, since I was a kid…everything about it turned out to be wrong, eventually. I just wanted to be a part of something bigger than me, something that mattered,” Sarah sniffled. “And now…What in the world am I going to do now?”

“You’re asking the wrong question,” the Doctor responded. “I think what you really want to know is what in the _universe_ you’re going to do now. So, Sarah Hanson, what do you say we find out?”

Sarah looked around at the battered office one last time, the site of her “dream” destroyed. And then, she took the Doctor’s outstretched hand, following him and Rose out of Torchwood and into the TARDIS.


	2. What Do I Do Now?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor, Rose, and Sarah have a fun day on a faraway planet, but once they're back on the TARDIS, Sarah has to contemplate life after Torchwood.

_August 20, 2007_   
_The TARDIS_

They spent the next several weeks (relative to Earth time) on the TARDIS, floating in the time vortex. As fascinating and entertaining as the infinite, sentient ship was, Sarah was starting to get cabin fever. She wanted to get out and explore the universe like the Doctor and Rose said she could if she went with them, and she couldn’t help but be suspicious when they kept delaying a landing. It still wasn’t the easiest thing in the world for her to trust them, but to their credit, they gave her space when she needed it. Which was often, especially at first. It took a few days for the numbness to wear off and for Sarah to realize she was grieving and that this delay in the trip was to give her time to do it. Once she figured that out, she was grateful. Her grief itself, however, wasn’t as easy to understand.

Growing up as a foster kid, Sarah never really formed close ties. She bounced from home to home until she aged out of the system. She was always a strong student and never made trouble, but she acted just distant enough with the foster families that no one ever wanted to keep her. Sarah was polite, for sure, but would rarely show the side of her that would tie a first-grader’s shoe in an empty hallway at school or scoop up a caterpillar from the sidewalk and put it on the grass so it would be safer.  It was easier to keep that sort of softness hidden behind the protective shell of the loner tough girl image. She was the kid who led the softball league in runs but didn’t have friends on the team. She got third place in the science fair but had no one take a picture of her with her ribbon.

Sarah never dwelt on that, though. Her goal of Torchwood and the books she’d read on aliens and outer space kept her going even more than sports or school, anyway. Ask her about that, and she’d be truly enthusiastic. It wasn’t just what she did, it was practically who she was. Unfortunately, no one ever really asked her. Mostly they just thought she was weird.

So now, while she mourned on a macro level for her planet and the destruction the Daleks and Cybermen caused, and for all the people on Earth who died last month, there was no one she was personally grieving for. Her coworkers, she supposed. Or maybe it was people she would never get to meet; the would-be friends, lovers, family. Pages in the story of her life that would never be written now. Yes, it was the what-ifs that stung the most. She’d had more crying jags than she’d care to admit over that since she’d been on the TARDIS.

As she processed all of this and reflected on the day everything changed, she begrudgingly admitted just how heroic the Doctor and his friends were then and just how kind he and Rose were being now. She could relate to Rose fairly well; they were both human, around the same age, equally sarcastic, and shared a love of bad romantic comedies and forensic investigation shows. The last one freaked the Doctor out, much to the women’s delight.

Sarah’s relationship with the Time Lord was still a bit strained, though. She got the sense that he didn’t trust her, given her history with Torchwood and what they’d told her about him. She also got the sense that this good, heroic fun-loving Doctor was always just a moment away from being the rage-filled, dangerous man (alien) he also claimed to be. Then again, didn’t everyone have it in them to snap after seeing as much pain and death as he supposedly had? In a way, she felt like she could connect with him over that, now. Over being the one left behind.

All this ran through Sarah’s mind as her body glided through the water of the TARDIS’s Olympic-sized swimming pool. She closed her eyes after a moment and let herself just float. For the first time since “Doomsday,” as the reporters had taken to calling it, she felt a bit of peace. She tried to stay in the moment, to avoid questioning what the hell she was going to do when she finally returned to Earth, but then she opened her eyes to find the Doctor staring down at her from the side of the pool and let out a startled shriek.

“Oh, sorry! Didn’t mean to frighten you,” the Doctor said. “Just thought that, well, you’ve been here for a while now, relatively speaking. There’s no time on the TARDIS—“

“Doctor. You’re rambling again.”

“Right. Anyway, fancy a trip?”

Sarah smiled. She still didn’t have any answers, but here was the distraction she’d wanted since day one on the TARDIS. “I thought you’d never ask.”

_April 6, 3472_  
_Municipal Base Orion_  
_Planet Kalabaxia_

“It looks like…like…” Sarah stammered.

“I never get tired of this bit,” the Doctor murmured to Rose as they watched Sarah take in the alien landscape around them. “Human beings, can always count on you for enthusiasm. What do you think she’ll say? It’s like a dream? Or maybe a fairy tale?”

 “I mean it’s just…”

”Brilliant? Magnificent? Awe-inspiring?” the Doctor supplied.

“Cartoony.”

“Ah yes. Car—wait, what?!”

Rose burst out laughing. “That’s a new one, eh, Doctor?”

“It’s just that the colors are so bright,” Sarah breathed.

They stepped out of the TARDIS doorway toward a domed base made out of an iridescent light blue material. The red sun’s rays made purple spots appear on the structure, giving the whole thing the look of a mushroom right out of one of the Saturday morning animated shows Sarah grew up watching. The base was imposing, the only structure around in the flat grassland. As they made their way across the field, Sarah delighted in the feel of the tall grass on her legs. It was a comforting, familiar feeling despite the fact that she was hundreds of light years and thousands of chronological years away from anything she’d ever experienced before.

“Doctor, give us the rundown on this place again?” Rose asked, watching him light up instantly. The Doctor loved playing tour guide.

“Well, ladies,” he said, “we are on the planet Kalabaxia. Up ahead, that’s Municipal Base Orion, named for the constellation this planet is in. And the year is 3472.”

“That’s the part that’s really weird to me,” Sarah replied. “I always sort of figured there had to be other planets besides Earth that had life, you know? The universe is just too big for there not to be. But moving through time…” She gasped, suddenly realizing something. “Holy crap, everyone I’ve ever known has been dead for thousands of years.”

Rose laughed again and Sarah glared at her. “I’m sorry, I really am,” Rose said through her giggles. “It’s just that I had the exact same reaction the first time he took me to the future, and he’s got the exact same annoyed look on his face as he did then. Even though he’s got a different face!”

The Doctor, blushing, rolled his eyes. “Sometimes I hate that you know me so well, Rose Tyler.” He looked at Rose with an affectionate gaze that belied his words and Sarah smiled in spite of herself. “Anyway,” the Doctor continued, “that’s beside the point. We’re here to help Sarah have some fun now that she doesn’t have to fill her days with work for a nefarious organization.” He still couldn’t hide his disdain for Torchwood.

It was Sarah’s turn to roll her eyes now, but it was mostly to disguise the hurt she felt at the Doctor’s words. She’d turned a blind eye to how potentially dangerous and damaging Torchwood could be in favor of trying to advance her career there. She felt like a selfish fool.  Just because that kind of single-mindedness was pervasive at Torchwood didn’t mean she should’ve been swept up in it. Ultimately, the culture of the place contributed to a lot of deaths; the fact that she was in some way complicit by association sickened Sarah, and the accuracy of the Doctor’s characterization of Torchwood was almost too much to bear. She should’ve been better than that…shouldn’t she? Sarah liked to think she was a good person, but honestly, after being in the Torchwood vacuum for so long (and failing to act when their operations were less-than-savory), she didn’t know who or what she was now.

As they approached the entrance to the base, she sighed and then inhaled; the air here smelled like cotton candy and she couldn’t resist the smile that spread across her face at that. Maybe Sarah didn’t know who she was, but she knew she liked cotton candy.

The day turned out to be incredibly fun. Sarah bonded with both Rose and the Doctor as they shared in a variety of activities with an otherworldly twist. Municipal Base Orion was like a huge flea market of sorts, selling trinkets from across this solar system: figurines of nine-eyed robot gods, flashy holographic entertainment systems (that the Doctor said were cheap knockoffs), snacks that talked (which horrified Sarah and Rose alike). After shopping, they went to the rentals section of the base for, of all things, jetpacks to go sightseeing across the planet. It really was like something out of a science fiction film, and Sarah liked it that way.  At Torchwood, she dealt with aliens all the time, but never so many different species in one place and, of course, never on an alien planet. This feeling was what she’d dreamed of all those years ago; she wanted to be part of something that led to these kinds of experiences.

_August 20, 2007_  
_The TARDIS_

Back on the TARDIS at the end of the day, the Doctor tinkered under the console while Sarah and Rose, exhausted but happy, decided to retire to the media room to kick back with some wine and bad reality television. That’s when Sarah’s thoughts of her own reality began to creep back in. And unlike the show they were watching, there was nothing fake about her situation. She’s been promised one trip in the TARDIS and that was done now. Once the Doctor and Rose dropped her back “home,” she would have nothing and no one to return to. And she’d grown close to the quirky Time Lord and his girlfriend. (Rose said that was probably the closest word for what they were. Even though they’d basically promised each other forever, she was sure calling the Doctor her “fiancé” just yet would make him crash the TARDIS.) Pride, however, is a strong and funny thing, and Sarah just couldn’t bring herself to ask to stay. If they agreed, it would be out of pity and Sarah refused to be anyone’s charity case.

She looked over at Rose, who was engrossed in the show, and made a decision. She might not be anyone’s charity case, but Sarah had to admit she could really some advice. And while she and Rose had had plenty of perfectly nice chats, they’d never really gone beyond the level of discussing music or teasing the Doctor now and then, because Sarah was careful to avoid anything more. She’d never formed the kind of female friendships she’d seen other girls at school have growing up. She dismissed these sleepover-and-secret-telling kind of bonds as frivolous, but the truth was a big part of her craved them. If ever she had a shot at one, it was now. _Just say what you need to say._

Sarah turned her head back to the screen, eyes glued to it as she spoke. “So, today was fun.” _Nice opener, Hanson. Real original._

Rose smiled. “Yeah, definitely.” She sipped her wine and kept her eyes on the television.

“So…is it all just traveling around then? What do you two do most of the time?” Sarah hadn’t meant for it to come out as judgmental, but she could sense Rose tense a bit.

“It’s not just travelin’,” Rose said with the slightest edge to her voice, her accent suddenly a bit thicker. “We help people. We go where we are needed, sometimes by crash landin’ but that’s besides the point. We go and we do what needs to be done.”

“Like you did at Torchwood,” Sarah said quietly. Shame crept over her, which was at once painful and infuriating. She was a Torchwood operative, for goodness sake. She should be tougher than this. _You’re not a Torchwood operative anymore_ , the voice in her head reminded her.

Sarah looked at Rose and was surprised to see that there was no pity in her eyes, just sympathy. Rose nodded gently.

“I thought that’s what I was doing there, too. Helping. But it was all a lie. Like I said, today was fun, but now it’s over and I still have no clue what to do with my life. My life was Torchwood. As pathetic as it is, working there was all I ever wanted to do.”

 Rose turned to her with a kind smile. “No, your _idea_ of Torchwood was what you wanted to do. From what you’ve said, you were never that big into the “alien threat elimination” sort of thing. What you wanted to do was bring people together. Let aliens and humans coexist peacefully, yeah? Give the aliens a chance to tell their stories and start a new life. Write their next chapters. Am I right?”

Sarah laughed. “You’re annoyingly perceptive. But what does it matter what I wanted then? Doesn’t solve anything now.”

“I’ve been traveling with the Doctor for a while now and I’ve seen all sorts of horrible things, all across time and space. But that still didn’t convince me that there’s more bad than good out there, and while we don’t always succeed, ultimately, what we do, me n’ him, is try to add to the good. And I think that’s what you were trying to do at Torchwood. So maybe start with that and see where it takes you.”

“Thanks,” Sarah said, fighting the tears that threatened to fall. It wasn’t even so much Rose’s advice, but the fact that Sarah felt like she really did connect with the other woman in a way she’d never gotten to before. All this time, they were becoming true friends and she never even realized it. “Now, pour me some of that wine you’d been hoarding.”

“With pleasure,” Rose said. 

Sarah handed Rose her empty glass, which promptly fell to the floor as the women were thrown back, a loud and violent crash resounding through the entire room.

The shaking continued as the TARDIS began to pitch wildly. It felt like an out-of-control, horrible amusement park ride. When it was over, they looked at each other with wide, terrified eyes while gasping for breath. After a moment, Rose stood up, dusted herself off, and extended a hand to Sarah. “Well, Sarah, it looks like you might get a chance to see what we do after all.”


	3. A Muse Named Walter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After crash landing, the Doctor, Rose, and Sarah find themselves on a planet in the midst of a creative renaissance. And a super weird muse.

_August 20, 2007_   
_The TARDIS_

The Doctor rushed into the media room just as Rose and Sarah were leaving it, causing him to barrel right into Rose. “Oof!” he cried, then started searching her form for any signs of injury. Satisfied that Rose seemed okay, he gave Sarah a once-over and reached the same conclusion. Still, he couldn’t help but check: “Are you two all right?”

The women nodded. “What happened, Doctor?” Sarah asked.

“TARDIS went rogue again. Apparently, this is where she wanted to go and, despite my attempts at regaining control of the navigation system, this is where we shall stay. At least for now. So! Who wants to know where ‘this’ is?” Before Sarah or Rose could answer, the Doctor turned on his heels and bounced down the corridor back towards the console room.

_February 27, 2191_   
_Albish City_   
_Planet Scriveria_

A gentle breeze hit Sarah’s face as they exited the TARDIS. The Doctor sniffed, taking in the fresh air himself. “Ahh, lovely day here on Scriveria. That’s good! Looks like we’re in the capital, Albish City, if I remember my Scriverian geography.” They were on a cobblestone street in a city that had a sort of old-world charm about it, aside from the flying car-type-things scurrying across the sky above them. “At least the TARDIS sent us somewhere I’ve heard of,” the Doctor continued. Never been here, myself, though. But from what I understand, there’s something of a creative renaissance happening here in the late 22nd and early 23rd centuries. Which, if the TARDIS data screen was correct—and it always is—we should be right in the middle of!”

Sure enough, the square was bustling with creative activity: painters, street performers, and craft makers. There were several different species, but predominantly tall, humanoids with golden skin and striking jade-colored eyes. Sarah noticed that many of them appeared to be engrossed in their futuristic ultra-thin tablets, swiping their fingers across it with practiced ease.

“Some things don’t change that much,” Rose quipped. “Everyone glued to their…smartphones, or whatever. I wonder what game they’re playing.”

“They’re not playing games,” the Doctor said. “They’re writing.” He gave an explanation about the low-level telepathic censors in the tablets that made swiping one’s finger across the screen as effective as typing on a keyboard, then rambled about a bunch of extra details that Rose and Sarah only half-listened to. Sarah was looking at the paintings the artists around the square were creating, then noticed some banners on poles across the square advertising the arts festival they seemed to be in the middle of. Her gaze went to the booths and shops surrounding the festival. Everything she saw, from children’s toys to ornate sculptures, had the same character on them: a friendly-looking eagle-like creature with glasses and a little blue t-shirt.

“Doctor, Rose, look. That bird thing is everywhere,” she said.

The Doctor took notice. “So it is. Not exactly the creative renaissance I imagined. Figured there’d be a bit more variety.”

“It’s like Mickey Mouse or something. But…creepier, somehow.” Rose made a face.

“That is Walter,” a rich, proud voice said from somewhere behind them. They turned to find a native Scriverian woman smiling at them. Rose quickly pasted a smile over her grimace. “And he is our muse.” The woman held up one of the thin glass tablets, which now looked like the cover of a novel, to show the travelers. She pointed to the byline. “Vega Omicron. Pleased to meet you.”

“Hello!” the Doctor said brightly. “I’m the Doctor, and that’s Rose and Sarah. We’re just here for the arts festival!” Vega bowed her head in greeting to each of them and they returned the gesture.

“So, you created Walter?” Sarah asked.

“Not exactly,” Vega responded. “Walter belongs to all of us. In fact, no one is really sure who came up with him first. We like it that way; there’s enough Walter to go around!” she gushed. “In the four years since I wrote my first Walter novel, my life has changed completely. Back then, my career as a writer had stalled I and would often drink too much out of despair. I became a laughing stock and I was ready to try to find some off-planet meaningless job just to afford food. But one day, the idea for the first book just sort of popped into my head. It was a miracle! Six novels, thirteen children’s books, and three films later, Walter has truly made me rich in more ways than one. And not just me; he’s helped the career of every single creative artist I know,” Vega said, waving her hand around the square full of people hard at work making and selling their Walter-themed creations. “They started working on their Walter stories and paintings and things right when I did. We’ve all got a different take on him. It’s like he’s everyone’s muse.”

“How inspiring,” the Doctor responded, voice steady and void of the suspicion he was feeling. “So is he based on a real creature, then?”

“He’s part of real art, Doctor. That’s all that matters to us,” Vega replied with a tight smile. “Walter gives us the chance to express ourselves. To tell our stories. Speaking of, if you’ll excuse me, I must be going. I’m doing a reading from my latest book and I don’t want to be late. But I would be delighted if you three would come.”

“We’d love to,” Rose said, “But we’re famished. Haven’t eaten since yesterday. Cheers!” She gave Vega a big smile, grabbing the Doctor’s hand and nodding to Sarah to follow them as she and the Doctor shuffled away. “A pleasure meeting you,” Sarah said as she went to follow. As she turned away, Sarah thought she caught a glimpse of Vega sneering coldly, but thought maybe it was just her overactive imagination. It wasn’t just Rose; this place, especially Walter and Vega, gave her the creeps.

Vega waited until the three odd visitors rounded a corner before tapping behind her ear to activate her comm link. “I’m in the square. We have a breach.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor, Rose, and Sarah decide to investigate why everyone on Scriveria is obsessed with Walter the bird.

_February 27, 2191_   
_Albish City_   
_Planet Scriveria_

As the Sarah caught up to the Doctor and Rose, she tried not to let on how nervous she was. After Doomsday and all the other things she’d seen at Torchwood, Sarah couldn’t understand why this weird but seemingly benign little place with a mascot everywhere was giving her the creeps so badly. Clearly, the Doctor and Rose felt the same way, which unsettled her even more. They supposedly dealt with these kinds of things all the time, didn’t they? “So…Vega and this Walter stuff is really weird, right?” Sarah asked lamely.

The Doctor nodded, already working on solving the mystery. “It’s like some kind of mind control, but not. These people are coming up with the ideas themselves, or at least they think they are.”

“I think we’re going to have to talk to more of the artists,” Rose said. “But there’s still something about Vega in particular I didn’t like.”

“Me neither,” replied Sarah. “I could practically feel her shooting daggers at us as soon as we turned our backs.”

“Seems to me we have two tasks at hand, then,” the Doctor said. “And three of us. Well, two humans and a Time Lord, so it’s really like four of us or something, I’ve got to be as clever as at least two humans, although the maths are all off because I really can’t be compared to other species in a quantifiable--”

Rose cleared her throat. “Rude,” she said sternly. It shut the Doctor up and he smiled at her sheepishly. She rolled her eyes and gave him a quick peck on the cheek.

“My point is,” the Doctor continued, “you two go see what you can find out from the others and I’ll try to get some more information on Vega. Sound good?”

“Let’s do it,” Sarah said, swallowing her unease and letting herself be energized by the Doctor’s determination. It reminded her of when she first walked into Torchwood, when she was so excited to learn about everything she even didn’t know she didn’t know. For the first time in as long as she could remember, Sarah felt that mix of fear, curiosity, and the desire to do something good that she’d had when she started there; the feeling she’d hoped would define her days at Torchwood, but never really did. Feeling that exhilaration now made Sarah feel more like herself than she had in years. A small smile spread across her lips at the realization.

“What?” Rose asked, noticing Sarah’s expression.

“Nothing. It’s just that I’m starting to understand what you meant before about what you do. You go where you’re needed and you try to make things better. And it’s weird and scary and…brilliant.”

“Now you’re getting it,” Rose said with a chuckle.

Heading south away from the square, the women soon came to a small park where even more people were drawing, painting, and writing about Walter. There even appeared to be a film shoot going on, complete with someone in a giant, fluffy Walter costume. In the scene, he was fighting a purse snatcher before somersaulting over to a little boy and catching his ice cream just before it hit the ground. It was incredibly cheesy, but as soon as the director yelled “cut,” everyone in the park applauded wildly. One visibly moved man wiped tears out of his eyes.

“Weird, weird, weird,” Sarah murmured. She looked away from the set to see Rose approaching a painter and joined her next to the Scriverian’s easel. This woman, though less of a daunting presence than Vega, had a similar story of inspiration and her body of work was exclusively Walter-centric. The theme continued with two more writers, a performance artist, and the director of the film. After each interview, however, they began to feel like the people in the park were getting more and more suspicious of their presence. Sarah and Rose decided to retreat to a local restaurant to debrief.

They ordered a pizza in the shape of a bird—the “Walter Special”—and as they ate, Sarah and Rose talked through what they’d discovered so far.

“So it seems to have started around the same time for all of them,” Sarah noted. “three or four years ago. And it was a random spark of inspiration. One day they just started creating Walter stuff and never stopped.”

“The big question, then, is why Walter?” Rose asked. “These people are all making money from their work. They’re happy. No one seems to be getting hurt, but still, they talk about this cartoony bird character like he’s a god or something. So who’s benefitting from everyone thinking that way? Do you think it’s, like, a shadowy corporation or something?”

No answer. Rose looked up from her pizza to discover Sarah staring out the window, wide-eyed. “I don’t know,” she whispered shakily. “But somebody is, and they don’t like us asking about them.”

Rose followed Sarah’s gaze just in time to see the Doctor escorted around a corner by armed guards. Their uniforms had Walter insignia. Panicked, Rose made to get up, but Sarah grabbed her arm, wordlessly indicating the waitress, who was changing the coffee pot. “She’s done that twice in ten minutes,” Sarah whispered to Rose. “She’s trying to be subtle, but she’s been watching us. We panic now, it’ll probably just get us taken away, too.” Rose took a shaky breath, but nodded, sipping her water.

After a couple of minutes, they got up and exited the diner, giving the waitress a perfunctory nod on the way out. Once they were outside and clear of the window, Rose sprinted around the corner. Unfortunately, the Doctor was long gone, but Sarah noticed a thin billfold on the ground. She scooped it up. “I found something.”

“Yes!” Rose exclaimed. “It’s the Doctor’s psychic paper. You see what the person who has it wants you to see. The Doctor left us a message. Look.”

 _I’ll be okay. Just taking me to a cell. Scriverians not typically violent._ Rose sighed in relief, but the message quickly disappeared and a new one took its place: _There’s a cave in Vega’s book. Go ASAP! Key to the mystery?_

“As much as I want to kill ‘im for gettin’ ‘imself captured like a bloody idiot,” Rose said, her accent thick again, “Sounds like ‘e ‘ad a good lead he was followin’ and gettin’ to the bottom of this is probably the best way to protect ‘im.”

Sarah grabbed her friend’s hand and squeezed. She took a deep breath and made a decision. “You go to the Doctor. I’ve got this.” Sarah said it with more conviction than she felt, but Rose took her at her word and gave her a quick hug before going off in the opposite direction.

Sarah was striking out on her own, actually doing something important without anyone backing her up. She wasn’t sure if it was brave or stupid or both, but it felt like a chance to prove to herself that she was up to the task. A moment later, though, Sarah stopped dead in her tracks when she was waylaid by a strange vision. A woman around her age, with dark skin and a doctor’s coat, running through a hospital with the Doctor, away from giant rhinos. Outside, it looked like the surface of the moon. And then the young woman was performing CPR on an unresponsive Doctor. Sarah saw it all so clearly that for a moment she thought she’d actually been transported into the surreal scene, but as quick as it came, the vision was gone again.


	5. Visions of Stories Yet Untold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sarah has some unexpected visions as she makes her way towards the cave.

_February 27, 2191_   
_The Southern Hills_   
_Planet Scriveria_

Sarah did her best to keep up her steady pace towards the hills that held the cave (having been pointed in the right direction by a hardcore fan of Vega’s books), but more visions slammed into her mind, as real as if she were there. All of them featured the Doctor and women she’d never seen before. None of them were the friends he had with him at Torchwood.

Each new vision was so very strange.

Another vision of the medical doctor, only now she was dressed all in black, moving from village to village telling stories of the Doctor.

A tall, red-haired woman standing next to the Doctor, keeping up with him word for word, thought for thought, like she herself was a Time Lord.

Another redhead, younger this time, standing with another version of the Doctor overlooking what seemed like a giant brain, convincing him not to kill it.

A short brunette with that same Doctor, diving into a swirling column of electricity and time, impossibly splitting herself to save his life and meeting a dozen other faces that were all the Doctor, too.

Sarah wasn’t sure how she knew these other men were the Doctor or that the visions she saw were real. But she did, she absolutely knew. But why were they happening? And why to her? What the hell was _she_ supposed to do with all of this? Once again, there were too many questions and almost no answers. At this point, she felt almost powerless, frustrated by what she didn’t know instead of excited about it. Still, she found herself genuinely wanting to solve this mystery and free the people from whatever hold was on them, causing them to be obsessed with Walter. Speaking of Walter, the damn thing was inescapable, even out here on the hills. There were digital projections that would show up as soon as Sarah was in a few feet of them, all featuring Walter.

At least the cave was in sight now, albeit still far away. _You’ll never be able to do this_ , a voice that sounded suspiciously like Yvonne Hartman sneered in her head. It was tempting to listen to, like she would’ve before, and Sarah almost turned back. But it was that very impulse enraged her and gave Sarah what she needed to push on. She was done going along with what others wanted when it wasn’t right, done with them thinking she was easy to control. It was time to show Yvonne, Torchwood, and the universe what the real Sarah—the curious, determined, compassionate Sarah—could do.

Sarah focused back on the visions she’d had. They all involved the Doctor, and they all involved a strong woman. Someone the Doctor seemed to need. Well, he needed _her_ now, and she wasn’t going to let him, or more importantly herself, down.

Apparently, the women she’d seen in her mind needed her, too. All of them had just appeared on the next hill—and this was no vision.


	6. Companions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sarah meets some other women who have traveled with the Doctor (aka all the other major NuWho female companions she hasn't met yet)

_February 27, 2191_   
_The Southern Hills_   
_Planet Scriveria_

Sarah’s mouth dropped open as she watched the women materialize a few feet from the ground and fall like ungraceful human raindrops. They quickly took in their surroundings; each was as bewildered as Sarah.

“Oi! You over there!” The older redhead shouted, motioning to Sarah to come over. “Where are we?”

Sarah made her way to the group and gave a friendly wave. Each of them looked welcoming enough, but she could tell they were ready to run or fight at any second if necessary. _The Doctor’s trained them well_ , she thought. “You’re on a planet called Scriveria, and it’s the year 2191,” Sarah explained.

“Where’s the Doctor?” the small brunette asked. The others looked at her, surprised. “You know the Doctor, too?” the young Black girl wondered.

“I’m going to save you all some time,” Sarah chimed in. “I think we _all_ know the Doctor. And have gone on adventures with him. And maybe were in the middle of one and ended up here all of a sudden. Am I right?” Each of them nodded and Sarah smiled. “Nice to meet you. I’m Sarah Hanson.” She turned to the brunette and pointed down the hill. “And to answer your question, the Doctor is currently in a jail cell somewhere near that city down there. But Rose—she’s one of us, too—is working on getting him out.”

“And once she does, she’d better bring him here so I can kill him for causing whatever’s going on right now,” the younger redhead said in a snappy Scottish accent. Everyone laughed. “Oh yeah,” the brunette responded, “This mess has him written all over it.”

As important as it was to get to the cave, Sarah figured if she was going to enlist their help, she might as well spend a few minutes with these ladies. If everyone got to know each other a little bit, they’d probably work together better. Each introduced herself: the medical student was Martha, the older redhead Donna, the younger redhead Amy, and finally the short brunette was named Clara. They were all from Britain, and Sarah smirked at the thought that, despite their different appearances, the Doctor had a “type.” British women. After all, even if she didn’t fit the “British” part of the bill, he’d found her in London, too.

They were all from the same time period, their “presents” within just a few years of one another. A moment here or there where something was different, one little quirk of fate where they never met the Doctor, and they could’ve met in a pub in London rather than on a hillside on another planet. “Would’ve been dreadfully boring,” Donna said dryly.

Much like becoming friends with Rose, being with this quirky, fierce group of women made Sarah feel like she belonged in a way she hadn’t before, and it was empowering. Unfortunately, it was time for the girl bonding to be put on hold and get back to the task at hand. She gave the other women the rundown on Vega, the other artists, and Walter. (They’d noticed the digital projections anyway.) Sarah explained how everyone seemed to be controlled by this character or whoever created it, but none of them seemed to realize it. “The Doctor seems to think there’s some key to all of this in that cave over there,” Sarah finished, “but he didn’t get a chance to tell us why he thinks that or what we’ll find there.”

“Well, at least now you don’t have to find out on your own,” Martha replied with a smile as they trekked to the next hill.

“One thing, though, Sarah,” Clara said. “You never explained how you seemed to know we all travel with the Doctor. You were surprised to see us, but…”

“It was like you recognized us,” Amy finished.

Sarah explained the visions she began having as soon as she left Albish City. All of the women recognized the incidents Sarah had seen, except for Clara, who did her best to shake off the unease she felt at hearing what Sarah saw about her. _Fragmented into a million pieces? Strands of time?_ This part of her story hadn’t been written yet. Clara just hoped when it was, it wasn’t one that could be found in the horror section and said as much.

“It won’t be if you have anything to say about it,” Sarah told her with a smile.

“I’m not sure it’s that simple. I mean, look at what we’re investigating right now,” Clara noted. “Not exactly a Scooby Doo mystery.”

“Well, we may not have the Mystery Machine,” Donna chimed in, “but the cave’s right over there. Let’s figure all this out and go home because frankly, that bird thing everyone’s so obsessed with is just _weird_. Gives me the creeps.”

“That’s not very nice,” said a voice from the cave. Out came Vega, with Walter by her side. Only this wasn’t a person in a costume or a digital projection, and it was anything but cartoony. It was just a four-foot tall, vicious-looking eagle-like creature with the biggest talons any of them had ever seen. There was no silly blue shirt or glasses, just an imposing barbed collar. The bird squawked – a shrill, horrible sound. “See? You’ve upset him. I think you ladies had better come over here and apologize.”


	7. Meeting the Villain, Becoming the Hero

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sarah and the other companions face the person behind the Walter craze.

_February 27, 2191_   
_The Southern Hills_   
_Planet Scriveria_

Vega looked at the group with eyes as beady and hateful as those of the creature next to her. “Now, if you’ll all come with me, I have someone who would like to have a word with you.” Vega forced them into the cave, sandwiching the women between her and Walter so they couldn’t escape.

“Who are you taking us to?” Sarah asked, not even bothering to hide the venom in her voice. “Aren’t you the one behind all this?”

“Oh no, dear,” Vega laughed. “But he and I have quite a nice arrangement. I go wherever I need to and make sure no one loses interest in Walter. Talk about how he’s the greatest thing in the world and how I’d be nowhere without him. Every now and then we have to get rid of someone who’s thinking for themselves a bit too much, but usually it’s a very easy job. Pays quite well. Much better than writing pathetic children’s books, let me tell you.”

As they went deeper into the cave, which was lit by red, glowing stalactites, Sarah noticed a sort of surveillance room filled with screens depicting artists and writers all over the planet. Vega caught her looking. “And that’s our eagle eye, as they say.” She laughed. Martha scrunched her face in disgust at the terrible joke as Vega continued. “Every creative work and every person creating it is monitored through this system.”

“Why? Why do you care so much about the art people make? About the stories they write?”

“Because stories are power,” a booming voice said from the shadows. A fat, hairy man who Sarah thought looked like a cross between Chewbacca and Winston Churchill stood in front of them.

“Walter! How good of you to join us!” Vega gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “I’ll leave them to you, darling,” she said, backing out of the room and pulling a previously-hidden steel door shut behind her.

“I thought Walter was the bird,” Donna growled. “But it makes sense that the real Walter is even more hideous.” The bird squawked a warning from behind them and the hairy, humanWalter glared at the women.

“Careful, girls. I might be the real Walter, but the bird’s got real talons,” hairy Walter sneered. “Anyway, as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted,” he continued, “stories are power. Think about it. Religion. Politics. All of it is stories we tell about ourselves. What we see. What we do. What we think. What we believe. And how do you get someone to go to your church or vote for you? You get them to think it was their idea, when it was yours all along. I was the only one here smart enough to see how to do it on a bigger scale. They say authors create worlds. I decided to take that a bit more literally. More fun that way.”

“Why not just put them in trances or conquer them like normal crazed dictators?” Amy snarked.

“Trances are just so obvious and boring. A brilliant creative mind like mine needs a challenge,” Walter replied. “Besides, people try to overthrow dictators. They embrace muses. It’s a nice, steady stream of creative energy to feed on this way. And they like it!” He went over to the screens and a took a deep breath. The people on the screens froze. A silver, glowing energy bled from the monitors and into his body, expanding it a tiny bit more. Walter exhaled with bliss and on the screen the pace of the writers and artists happily picked up their work again. “See? Everybody’s happy!” He walked over to the bird, which squawked at him in greeting.

“Unfortunately, though, I’m afraid this story’s going to have to end. You just had to be the busybodies, didn’t you? Don’t you know nobody likes those characters? They usually end up dying.”

Walter grabbed on of the spikes on the bird’s collar. “I take this off my avian friend here and it’s all over. He’s a telepathic conduit and this collar channels his energy and sends out the signals exactly how I want. Those sparks of ideas that every writer and artist dreams of, that they think they’re so brilliant for coming up with all on their own? It’s just me telling them what to think. Unfortunately, taking off the collar is likely to produce a dangerous burst. Delicious, but it’ll almost surely kill everyone on this planet besides me. Fry their brains like crispy bacon. Oh, it’ll be a bit annoying having to start over with a new planet, but it’ll be fun, too, won’t it? Everybody loves a sequel.”

Sarah watched in horror as Walter moved his hand toward the buckle on the collar. Rage was boiling in her at the hubris and evil of this disgusting man. She might not have stood up to Yvonne or Torchwood, but here was her chance to really do something. _We do what needs to be done_ , Rose had said.

So Sarah leapt and tackled Walter.

There was screaming and squawking and pain exploded into her arm. The bird creature’s talon had grazed her. Thankfully, the other women were quickly by her side, working together to hold the bird still and keep Walter subdued.

“You’re forgetting all those stories where the villain tells his evil plan to everyone and it ends up backfiring,” Sarah said, gritting her teeth against the pain as she pinned Walter to the ground. “Your days of controlling these people and what they create are over. We’re stopping you, right here, right now.”

“Um, Sarah?” Donna said in a not-so-subtle stage whisper, “you mind telling the rest of us how we’re going to do that?”

Sarah didn’t actually know, but she tried to think it through. “Walter said the collar is feeding into the bird’s telepathy, controlling what goes in and out of its mind and, through the collar, to everyone else. Take the collar off, everybody’s brains fry.”

“He could be lying,” Martha pointed out.

“We can’t take the chance. The only thing we can do is deactivate the collar. But how? Tell us!” Sarah growled at Walter. He just laughed evilly. Sarah kneed him in the groin. His yelp was quickly drowned out by a far more pained cry, however. Sarah looked over to see that Amy had a huge gash on her head. Donna managed to pull the bird’s head away and dodge before it could hurt her too, but its beak dripped with Amy’s blood.

“Sarah, I don’t know how much longer we can hold this thing,” Clara said, strained. Sarah saw how each of them was desperately trying to keep control of the creature while avoiding its nasty claws and beak. Martha was trying to tend to Amy at the same time, and Amy had clearly weakened from her wound. If they were going to survive this, Sarah was going to have to help them and try her best to fend off Walter the human at the same time. Sarah wanted to cry. Here was yet another unexpected twist, and she wasn’t sure how to deal with it.

_An unexpected twist_. The words resonated in Sarah’s mind like the chime of a bell. That was it.

“The bird’s telepathy isn’t working like it should because of the things Walter is forcing into its mind. So maybe it just needs some new stories. Like the mad, wonderful adventures of people who fly around in a blue box with an alien.” She strode over to the bird and looked it directly in the eye, trying to communicate that she meant no harm.

“What are you doing?” Walter asked as he tried to get to his feet.

“A rewrite.” Sarah turned to her friends. “All right, ladies. Walter might think he’s got a good story here, but I think our own stories are even better. So let’s tell them. Everyone focus. Make sure you’re touching the bird and just focus on a story in your mind. Maybe giving it a bunch of new narratives will disable the collar.”

“You sure this will work?” Amy asked weakly.

“No,” Sarah replied honestly. “But you heard what Walter said. Stories have power. And this is our only shot. So, tell your story. One about a time when you did something amazing,” she said with a smile, before closing her eyes and picturing herself and her new friends in this very moment. Energy thrummed through her, shaking every molecule in Sarah’s body. For a moment she was sure she had made the ultimate mistake and was dying along with everyone else on the planet. But then she realized that the big, muscular animal body beneath her hand seemed to be… smaller. When the shaking stopped, Sarah dared to open her eyes.

No one was dead. 

She and her friends were sitting around an adorable, gentle-looking bird with fluffy feathers, big, friendly eyes, and a small beak.

Donna got up and grabbed Walter the human before he could escape and came face to face with the Doctor and Rose, who held Vega’s arms behind her back. Sarah saw them and beamed. “We did it.”

***

A few hours later, they were back on the TARDIS so Amy could get her wound taken care of and everyone could rest a bit. There was still a lot to do to make sure everyone on this planet was okay, but the Doctor had done a quick check on Albish City and reported that people seemed to be snapping out of it “even if they didn’t know they were in it.”

As for Sarah, there were still a lot of questions about her life to answer. But as she enjoyed some tea with her new friends, talking about their adventures through time and space, she was sure about one thing now: this was her story, and her next chapter was off to one hell of a start.


	8. Epilogue: The Book

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose discovers an interesting book in an alien market.

_November 2, 3960_  
_Municipal Base Orion_  
_Planet Kalabaxia_

Rose weaved her way through a crowd of humans and aliens of all shapes and sizes. She’d left the Doctor to his search for new TARDIS parts a couple of hours ago while she went to the bustling market that was a mainstay of the base. It was their first trip since the Doctor had to wipe their memories to avoid some kind of time paradox. That’s why the several weeks previous were fuzzy. She’d always wonder what exactly they did in those weeks and why they weren’t allowed to remember it, but looking back wasn’t something she liked to do too much anyway. Better to live in the moment and find the next adventure.

She passed a stall full of books from across time and space. One in particular caught her eye: _A Universe of Good—Stories of the Great Things Out There._ She picked it up and read the dust jacket to discover that the book was a nonfiction collection by a woman who travels from planet to planet finding interesting tales of people helping each other and the world around them. Rose smiled at the charming concept. She liked to think that she and the Doctor contributed to stories like that now and then, and decided to buy the book. As the merchant was counting her change, Rose idly turned the book over in her hands. She stopped in surprise when she saw the photo of the author. The young woman with sandy hair looked really familiar, but Rose couldn’t quite place her. Did she know a Sarah Hanson? Shrugging, she took her change and went to find the Doctor. She was looking forward to returning to the TARDIS and curling up with her new book.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you very much for reading this! Now that school is over, I can't wait to get back to my WiPs and post new work on my main account :)


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